Variety reports that Raleigh’s NBC affiliate played censor on numerous occasions last night. At least nine incidents of censorship were said to have taken place on the station with audio removed (or attempted to be removed) during Chappelle’s monologue, the Walking Dead sketch and another piece featuring Chappelle, Leslie Jones and Kyle Mooney. Variety notes that a certain infamous word used by the president-elect made it through during the monologue before it could be edited, so local viewers got an added spotlight on it.

WRAL-TV issued a statement stressing that the censorship was the result of the affiliate’s policy and not the choice of NBC.

“WRAL-TV has a station obscenity, decency and profanity policy that outlines 10 specific words that will not be broadcast on our air. This policy is based on our own standards in combination with FCC guidelines. Our broadcast operators have a 10-second delay button they can choose to use. During Saturday Night Live on NBC, guest host Dave Chappelle used 2 of those words on 9 different occasions and they were silenced,” the station said in a statement. “Obviously, SNL is a live show so we had no prior indication about what would be said during the broadcast. We understand this caused disruption during the program. We wanted our audience to know this was a station decision, not the network’s, and why we made that choice.”

We’d like to send our apologies to those of you who will spend a good chunk of today trying to sort out which “10 specific words” are forbidden at the affiliate.

You must be new here, I’m ElGallo. Uproxx posts every single sketch, as well as the making of, behind the scenes stories of, twitter reactions to, and a letter grade for each sketch. Sometimes a retrospective of a sketch 5 years later

As someone who watches SNL on WRAL, I’m guessing one of those words is the N-word. I haven’t seen Chappelle’s episode yet so I don’t know if he said it, but they censored Michael Che for saying it on the season premiere.

Because your 6-year old might hear the word when they are watching TV unsupervised at 11:30 at night? Or maybe the station just decided that adults shouldn’t hear certain things either. I’m sure things will improve when the FCC Board gets its new appointees.

If the privately-owned station wishes to decide what content it broadcasts, isn’t that their right to their freedom of expression and freedom of association? Doesn’t mean it isn’t silly, but they can set their own policies.